Helen Frankenthaler

Celebrated among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters, Helen Frankenthaler played a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. Active for more than six decades, Frankenthaler emerged on the American art scene with a no-rules approach to painting, protean imagination and improvisational skills that reshaped the narrative not only for women artists but for the genre itself. With her innovative soak-stain technique, Frankenthaler explored a new relationship between color and form, expanding the potential of abstract painting in ways that continue to inspire artists today. Working with color, space, abstraction and poetry, Frankenthaler distinguished herself through her unique ability to combine technique, imagination, research and improvisation, expanding her practice beyond established canons in the pursuit of a new freedom in painting.
Painting without Rules is an ambitious presentation of the poetic abstractions of one of the most significant American artists of the 20th century. It examines Frankenthaler’s artistic affinities, influences and friendships by interweaving paintings created between 1953 and 2002 with select works by some of her contemporaries including Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Anne Truitt.
Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) was born in New York. She studied art under Rufino Tamayo, Paul Feeley and Hans Hofmann. Her first critical success was with Mountains and Sea (1952), which was emblematic of her soak-stain technique in which paint was absorbed directly into the canvas. She was included in Clement Greenberg’s landmark 1964 exhibition Post-Painterly Abstraction. The term “Color Field painting” was first coined to describe her work.

In this volume, around 70 works on paper from the late 1940s to the early 2000s are juxtaposed with a selection of paintings—around 10 key works—from each phase in the august career of Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011). For example, the monumental work Salome (1978) is set alongside stylistically related paintings on paper from the same year. Similarly, the watercolor Great Meadows (1951), from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, functions as a decisive precedent for the staining and dripping procedures created the following year, most famously Mountains and Sea (1952)—the key Abstract Expressionist painting in Frankenthaler’s oeuvre. In some phases the medium of paper dominates, especially in the later work—abstract landscapes with a horizon as well as polychrome color fields.
The majority of the works depicted in the catalog come from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in New York, supplemented by private collections and institutions.